This morning, self braved the hail, the gusty winds, the rain etc etc and went to the Main Post Office on Broadway in Redwood City to mail a copy of The Lost Language to Reena Peña (friend of a friend, who self met in Bacolod in January).

Dearest Mum suggested a restaurant for our first meeting: Baybay, which Dearest Mum said was somewhere in the Bacolod Reclamation Area. So Reena came to fetch self at L’Fisher Chalet, and she had her driver take us all over the Reclamation Area while we looked for this restaurant, and it was nowhere to be found. Later, Reena asked around and found out that the restaurant had closed — years and years ago. “So I guess,” Reena told self, “Baybay went Bye Bye!” 🙂

Anyhoo, self mailed her book to Rina today. There was a long line at the post office. That was OK, self loves to let her mind wander when she is standing in line. Plus it was raining so hard outside. Self was in no hurry to leave the post office.

The problem was that a man came in, and it was non-stop explosive sneezing. Self looked at the man: a middle-aged Chinese gent, with a very red face, obviously sick. Self put a scarf up to her nose. ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOO! went the man, about 20 times.

When self reached the clerk, she practically threw her money at her and didn’t wait for the receipt. “I have to go. Oh my God,” self burst out. “I just have to get out of here.”

The clerk looked at self with the most bewildered expression and asked, “Why?”

The explosively sneezing man walked right up to the clerk and self took off, practically running.

Granted, a cold virus is not as bad as nuclear radiation (unless, of course, it is SARS). In fact, it’s a very very mild irritant, just one more inescapable facet of daily, tedious life. But self still remembers how, flying Delta out of Narita in February, half the people who got on in Tokyo donned surgical masks as soon as they were seated in the plane cabin. (Are those sensitive souls still in Tokyo, self wonders? Given the current levels of radiation in vicinity?)

And she also remembers how, her first three weeks back in California, she had the most awful cough. It kept her up every night.

No, she would not like to have that experience repeated.

When self arrived home, she discovered that UCLA and Florida were in a very tight game, and UCLA was trailing.

##@@!!!

To calm herself, self began roaming the web, and saw something that made her think she wanted to add the Kate Winslet movie “Revolutionary Road” to her Netflix queue. But upon logging on to Netflix, she found that she had exceeded the number of movies she can rent for the duration.

She’s been watching “The Pacific” with hubby. There are six discs in total. Yesterday, self found out that Disc 2 is extremely, extremely slow (at least, compared to the heroics on Disc 1, which focused on Guadalcanal). The soldiers are on furlough in Melbourne. There are many scenes of hooking up with comely Australian lasses. And one of the main characters gets sent to another island for treatment of a mysterious ailment called “eneuresis” which seems to involve much bedwetting. But there are hardly any of those rousing scenes of battle that self was led to expect from Disc 1. (“Why are there no Asian American soldiers?” self found herself whining to hubby. Hubby’s immediate response: “They were all assigned to Europe. They wouldn’t send them to the Pacific Theater: they might get mistaken for the Japanese!” Oh.)

There are more scenes, however, involving Jacob Pitt, who, though far from being one of the main characters, is simply magnetic — especially the more haggard and scrawny he gets. This actor first came to self’s attention on “Justified,” where he impressed self with his sardonic delivery. On “Justified” Season 2, he is becoming — seriously — hot.

And since self has started on the subject of “Justified,” let’s just say she loves that there is less emphasis on Raylan shooting people (During Season 1, he just about killed one man per episode), but there are some very dark characters emerging.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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4 Comments

Maya said,

Is this my cousin Reena, daughter of Tita Lyn & Tito Nil (Gamboa)? (If yes) You could have asked me to send her a copy of your book from here :-). And by the way, don’t they have it at National Book Store in Bacolod?

Yeees! I know she’s your cousin because there’s a framed picture of Doreen in her sala! Which then made me feel like I was entering — well, anyway, I got very emotional (Inside. Outside, I was grinning like a monkey)

And, oh my goodness, I wouldn’t bother you with mailing my book (but if the book I mailed today doesn’t get to her, then maybe I WILL bother you to send my book!) She told me she went to National Bookstore (forget which one) and they didn’t have it.

Maya said,

No problem, just let me know– her two college-age sons attend school in Manila and live … with my parents! So I could just pass it along to them for Reena. (An aside: her name, Reena, is short for Doreen Alicia– yep, she was named for T. Doreen, her godmother, and my grandmother [Doreen’s mother], Alicia.)

I showed up at Reena’s house, my last week in Bacolod. She and Tita Lyn and everyone in the family (two or three uncles, a woman who looked like maybe she was a younger sister, a little girl) were just finishing lunch! And the little girl took my hand, led me to the table, and everyone made me eat! The food was sooo good!